“It hurts to lose a close game, especially on a free kick. I don’t think we deserved to lose. It was a game neither team deserved to win,” said girls’ varsity soccer coach Mattias Kodzoman.
Redwood was eliminated from the MCAL playoffs last Wednesday in a 1-0 loss to Marin Catholic at a very windy home game last Wednesday. The Marin Catholic team would later lose to Tamalpais in a back-and-forth final that went all the way to penalty kicks.
Still, the Redwood girls’ regular season record has earned them the fourth seed in the North Coast Section playoffs. The Giants will have faced Bentley High School, but the results were not available as of press time.
The winning goal of the MCAL game was scored off a free kick that was awarded midway through the first half at the edge of Redwood’s penalty area, when a Marin Catholic player went down after contact with two Redwood players.
“It was a soft, questionable freekick to me,” Kodzoman said.
MC Senior Camille Wilson, who has scored seven goals this season, stepped up to take the free-kick. Wilson drove the ball into the high wind, over the wall of Redwood players, and by sophomore goalie Mia Glenn-Schuster to take opening goal.
Despite consistent possession by Redwood for the rest of the game, the team failed to generate many opportunities, with few shots on goal.
“The rest of the game following the goal was really stagnant and boring. We did not create a lot of chances” said co-captain and top MCAL scorer during the regular season Chace Schornstein.
The Marin Catholic girls’ defense was stellar, preventing Redwood, a team that averages almost two goals a game, from scoring a single goal for the duration of the match.
According to Kodzoman, the girls had come into the MCAL semifinal game knowing it would extremely be close, having both won and lost to the Marin Catholic girls by a one goal margin during their two regular season games.
“We have been a difficult team to score on,” Kodzoman continued. “We have only given up five goals in the last 14 games. That comes from the entire team playing solid defense. We need to continue that to have success in NCS.”
For North Coast Sectionals, the Giants will hope to continue to employ their high intensity, high possession play style.
“We need to keep scoring goals, so we need Chace, who has scored more than half of our goals, to continue to do well,” Kodzoman said.
According to Kodzoman though, the team should not take any game in the tournament for granted.
“We lost a game on penalty kicks last year during the NCS tournament that we should have won on paper,” said Kodzoman.
